Articles

Let he who is without SIM cast the first stone

In a recent post Raffael Marty points out the shortcomings of a “classic” SIM solution including high cost in part due to a clumsy, expensive tuning process.

More importantly, he points out that SIM’s were designed for network-based attacks and these are on the wane, replaced by host-based attacks.

At Prism, we’ve long argued that a host-based system is more appropriate and effective. This is further borne out by the appearance of polymorphic strains such as Nugache that now dominate Threatscape 2008.

However is “IT Search” the complete answer? Not quite. As a matter of fact, any such “silver bullet” has never worked out. Fact is, users (especially in mid-tier) are driven by security concerns, so proactive correlation is useful (in moderation), compliance remains a major driver and event reduction with active alerting is absolutely essential for the overworked admin. That said “IT Search” is a useful and powerful tool in the arsenal of the modern, knowledgeable Security Warrior.

A “Complete SIM” solution is more appropriate for the enterprise. Such a solution blends the “classic” approach which is based on log consolidation and multi-event correlation from host and network devices PLUS a white/greylist scanner PLUS the Log Search function. Long term storage and flexible reporting/forensic tools round out the ideal feature set. Such a solution has better potential to satisfy the different user profiles. These include Auditors, Managers and Security Staff, many of who are less comfortable with query construction.

One dimensional approaches such as “IT Search” or “Network Behavior Anomaly Detection” or “Network Packet Correlation” while undeniably useful are in themselves limited.

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